On Thu, May 31, 2018 at 10:36:27PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote: >... > I don't think most users of testing realize that > they also need to include stable-backports in sources.list to get > security fixes. >...
No, this wouldn't get them all security fixes. It would only make a difference when the package with the security fix is backported at all *and* the backport is done before the package migrated to testing. This might help in some special cases like your package here, but wouldn't make any difference for packages like chromium or firefox-esr that never get backported and sometimes don't migrate to testing for a long time. As an example, Chromium last migrated to testing in November. Telling users that including stable-backports to sources.list would make their testing system secure would just be hiding the problem that their browser is 3 DSAs and 100 CVEs (sic) behind the version in stable-security. testing (and even unstable) often get security fixes after stable, and we should be honest about the fact that the security-supported part of Debian is a subset of stable[1] without backports. cu Adrian [1] plus (old)oldstable -- "Is there not promise of rain?" Ling Tan asked suddenly out of the darkness. There had been need of rain for many days. "Only a promise," Lao Er said. Pearl S. Buck - Dragon Seed